This is a record of my teaching journey. I am entering my 16th year as an educator. I have taught at risk, post risk, regular ed, and honors. I have taught English, PE, science, math, history, geography, and government. My purpose is to have a place to put my thoughts and have others join the conversation. I am currently located at the Utah Education Network and have the opportunity to work with teachers from all over the great state of Utah as a technology trainer.

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Sunday, September 4, 2016

Identifying Instructional Goals 9/4

I really liked the ideas in this chapter. I am someone that likes to get to the root of problems and find solutions that actually fix the problem. One of my favorite examples about this process is about Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis who was an obstetrician in Vienna's General Hospital in the mid 1800's. An alarming amount of women were dying in through the birthing process from his section of the hospital. It reached such a high level that he stopped practicing to figure out what the problem was. In his absence the mortality rate normalized and he realized that he was part of the problem. He was unsure what he was doing that was the problem so he observed other doctors and found that he was using the same methods and techniques. The one difference he found was that he went and worked in the morgue before helping with the births. Upon closer examination what he was doing was bringing the germs from the morgue to the birthing center. There are a lot of things that had to be examined before it was figured out what exactly was going on.

When it comes to defining instructional goals I think it is of utmost importance to do a needs analysis and see exactly what the gap between the goal and the actual outcome is before deciding how to go about fixing it. When I am designing a course I spend a lot of time determining what the learner needs to be able do and how they can show that they have learned the material. The course is then designed to meet these goals. After reading this week I know that I need to be more specific as well as do more analysis before determining what the instructional goals are and then how the learner will show mastery. Overall I felt that zeroing in what is most important is truly the most important thing. One of my favorite quotes is "the main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing." This statement is the key to instructional design and identifying instructional goals.